Manage your subscription

Europe’s first space station cargo ship set to launch

By Ker Than

About every 17 months, an ATV will carry 7.7 tonnes of cargo to the space station. After a six-month stay, it will depart and burn up in the atmosphere, along with 6.4 tonnes of trash (Illustration: ESA/D Ducros)

After more than three years of repeated delays, the first fully automated “space tug” is set to launch toward the International Space Station on Sunday.

The Jules Verne is the first of a new class of Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs) developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) that can self-dock with the ISS with limited ground control support. It can also act as a space tug, boosting the station’s orbit when necessary.

Jules Verne will lift off atop a modified Ariane 5 rocket at 0359 GMT on Sunday 9 March from Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana.

The launch was originally set for late 2004, but was pushed back due to the loss of NASA’s space shuttle Columbia in 2003. Other setbacks, including hardware and software glitches, followed.

Advertisement

The current launch was originally slated for Saturday, but the discovery of a misconfigured grounding strap used to separate the ATV from the launcher forced a last-minute 24-hour delay.

After numerous setbacks, project personnel are “very, very excited and really looking forward to have this baby going up,” ESA spokesman Franco Bonacina told New Scientist.

Named after the famous French science-fiction author, the 20-tonne spacecraft is billed as the “most powerful automatic spaceship ever built”.

Jules Verne is about the size of a double-decker bus and can ferry 7.5 tonnes of cargo to the ISS – nearly three times more than Russia’s Progress cargo ship.

Fully automated

But unlike Progress – which astronauts inside the station have to guide when docking – Jules Verne can park itself without human help, using lasers and radar-like pulses bounced off the station to identify its position.

It will pause about 2 km away from the station during its maiden flight, however. That’s because it must wait for the space shuttle Endeavour, due to launch on 11 March, to depart from the station. Then, it will begin rendezvous manoeuvres.

“It won’t go directly to the International Space Station,” Bonacina said. “It will stop at some standby positions for demonstrations. It will arrive at a certain distance from the station, stop there, pull out, and move to a different orbit, then come back close to the ISS before finally docking.”

Its payload will include booster propellant, as well as food, oxygen and water for the space station crew.

Burn up

Also onboard are a limited 19th-century edition of Jules Vernes novel “From the Earth to the Moon,” two original manuscripts about space by the author and a music playlist specially selected for the inaugural flight by a 14-year-old Norwegian girl.

In addition to ferrying cargo, ATVs are also capable of using their engines to re-boost the space station’s orbit to counteract the dipping caused by atmospheric drag.

After unloading, ATVs can also be used to stash station waste marked for destruction. The vehicles are designed to undock from the station after six months and disintegrate in controlled re-entry burns over the Pacific Ocean.

Four other ATVs are confirmed for flight, and more can be constructed if required, Bonacina said.

The next ATV launch is schedule for 2009, with subsequent launches to follow every 18 months or so.